Désirée went nearer and nearer. A man with a spade, making some headway with a hillock of earth, which, as he loosened, another scraped into a sack, fell dead, the brain pierced by a sharpshooter’s bullet. The man with the sack made a “_Tchk!_” with his tongue, then turned to shout for another digger. His eyes fell on Désirée. “What are you doing here, ma’am? This ain’t no place for a woman.” Désirée bent and took the spade from the dead man’s grasp. “I am strong,” she said, “and I like to dig. Hold the sack open.” She worked for an hour, until the breach was fully mended. At the last her fellow worker and she struck the dirt from their hands, and, straightening themselves, looked at each other. “You do fine,” he said. “I reckon you must have had some digging to do once.” “Yes, I had,” she answered. “For a long time and much of it. I am coming again.” The next day there was a bombardment that shook earth and sky. When, in the late afternoon, it was over, the air rested thick as on the slopes of a volcano in action, dusk and thick and heavy with the sullen odour of strife. Through the false twilight, Désirée, now at the cave, saw looming figures, litter-bearers. She knew they would come in at the ruined gate, and they came. She met them by the fallen house. “I am not badly hurt,” said Edward’s voice. “Don’t think it! And how blessed to have Cape Jessamine to come to—” The time wore on toward late June. The month of roses, here, was a month of red flowers of death. Outward from the Third Louisiana Redan dug feverishly the grey miners driving a gallery beneath the Federal sap. Outward from the blue lines dug fast and far the blue sappers, making for the Third Louisiana Redan that crowned a narrow ridge. Within the redan, seeing the explosion approach, the grey built a second parapet some yards behind the first. On the twenty-fifth the explosion came. The salient was wrecked, six men who were digging a shaft were buried alive. Through the thick smoke and infernal din was pushed a blue charge, hurrahing. The grey were ready at the second parapet. The Sixth Missouri, held by Forney in reserve, poured into the injured works. “_Yaaaaih!_” they yelled; “_Yaaaaih! Yaaaaihhhh!_” and checked the blue with a deadly volley. Their colonel—Colonel Erwin—mounted the shattered parapet. He waved his sword. “Charge, men, charge!” A minie killed him, but his men poured over the parapet. There was fierce hand-to-hand fighting. Dark came, the blue holding ditch and slope of the outer, now ruined parapet, the grey masters of the inner works.